Arts inquiry into nature, bush and green environments

Arts inquiry exploring intersubjective relationship with nature, bush, green environments

I am of Native American ancestry and identify as Native, however living here in Australia (Lutruwita Tasmania), I don’t have connection to this part of my background. My work as an artist explores this background, integrating my relationship to nature as part of my cultural history. My connection to bush, Country, is a core part of my being and identity, instilling a sense of ancient knowledge carried through my ancestry despite the displacement and lack of tangible connection to this native culture. Centring on my relationship with trees/bush, I connect and reconnect to my Native identity and to my past – my literal past and ancestral native past.
In my arts practice I explore intersubjective relationship with green environments. I am looking to not represent how these environments appear didactically, but my relationship to them and the experience of being in relationship with nature - the trees, as dynamic and alive relational beings.
I am interested in how certain composition of shapes can become meaningful in evoking this relationship and also create an opportunity for imagination. The shapes speak to ancient dwellings, tree hollows, spaces formed by rock and cavities, the repetition of lines and shapes to create a whole form – whilst also holding individual and unique structures – such as the veins of a leaf, the individual unique leaf in repetition forming a whole tree body. The lines echo natural composition, however there are also repeated sections and motifs that speak to the rich experience of being with, in and among the ecosystems.
The contrasting sections of perspective capture my experience of walking through bush, moving closer and then further from trees and the natural forms, a close up view of the patterns of leaves one moment and then, with a turn of the head, a broad wide gaze looking out to the horizon. An almost simultaneous experience of being with, close up and among, whilst also seeing the broader land, tree line, shapes of a hill’s curvature from afar. When close up, a butterfly may suddenly be up very close landed on a branch, holding still for moments and then fluttering on – we are both caught there together momentarily and I am simply another encounter on the butterfly's forest path. A second later, I see a far off bird land on a far off tree way ahead.
It is an undulating bushland here in Lutruwita, North Tasmania. At certain points there is a sense of being deep within the forest, looking upwards to find the horizon or some sense of where the path moves upwards. There is an embodied sense of being held within, encompassed in the green. This hasn’t even touched on the presence of many creatures living in the forest, moving about and noising, the movement of the water passage or the other senses brought into active participation in the relational experience.